![]() ![]() They included Jacques Bizet, his first homosexual flirtation and the son of the composer Georges Bizet. Proust kept the friends he made at the Lycée Condorcet for the rest of his life. Though a semi-recluse for the last third of his life, Proust filled his cork-lined apartment with modern inventions Photograph: Bibliothèque nationale de France ![]() ![]() Marcel Proust and his friends at the tennis court, 1892. “The moving thing about Blanche’s painting, and what has doubtless made it so famous, is that he is presented as forever young, whereas we know that he suffered a great deal, from asthma but also from being so sensitive,” says Anne-Laure Sol, the commissioner of the exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet. Years later, when Proust was an invalid under his own version of a lockdown at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, his housekeeper would screen visitors to ensure they had not been in close contact with flowers. He had suffered his first asthma attack at age 10 and was allergic to flowers, except orchids, which have no scent. Musée Carnavalet, ParisĪn orchid adorns the lapel of Proust’s dinner jacket. Wedged into 43 years between the Franco-Prussian war and ensuing Paris Commune and the first World War, the Belle Époque was a blessed interlude that was too good to last.Ī 1903 painting by Jean Béraud of the Lycée Condorcet, where Proust was educated. The women are always beautiful, the conversation always witty. Men in formal dress and women in extravagant gowns by Worth and Fortuny linger beneath sparkling chandeliers. Glittering soirees are recorded in paintings of the period, among the 280 works of art, photographs, manuscripts, letters, video and audio recordings on exhibit in "Marcel Proust, a Parisian Novel", which marks last year's sesquicentennial of Proust's birth and this year's centenary of his death, at the Musée Carnavalet until April 10th. It is 1892 and in Jacques-Émile Blanche's portrait of the dandy, socialite and aspiring writer, Proust is dressed for an evening out in Belle Époque Paris.
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